Festival Agendas
Quotes from Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World they Made by Kenneth Turan. Speaks on the primary agendas ruling the ethics and politics of all the world's most influential film fests. Where Sundance fell was a realistic approach, but the bitter reality of it highly disappointed me. Here is where everyone ranked: Fests with BUSINESS AGENDAS Cannes What is this thing called Cannes? Grueling, crowded, complicated, unforgiving, it’s been likened by a survivor to “a fight in a brothel during a fire.” A place where reputations are made and hearts are broken, fascinating and frustrating in equal parts, it has a love-hate relationship with Hollywood, yet gives out awards, including the Palme d’Or for best picture, that are the movie world’s most coveted next to the Oscars. Sundance He materialized all at once in a crowded room, his eyes wide and next door to desperate, his grip on my shoulder firm, even insistent. “See my film,” he said, quiet but intense. “Change my life.” At any other film event in any other city, that moment with a young director might have seemed unreal, out of place, even threatening. ShoWest LAS VEGAS—In a plaid shirt, loose-fitting pants, and nonchalant attitude, Adam Sandler was indistinguishable from the fans who’ve made him one of the most sought-after stars in America. “I’m not particularly smart,” he mock-confessed to increasing laughter and applause. “I’m not particularly talented; I’m not particularly good looking. But I’m a multimillionaire because of you people. So thank you very much.” Welcome to ShoWest, as in show me the talent, show me a little respect, and, most of all, show me the money. Fests with GEOPOLITICAL AGENDAS FESPACO OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO—The crowd, estimated at 40,000, pours through an honor guard of mounted camels and overflows the biggest stadium in the country. For the next three and a half hours a kaleidoscopic spectacle unfolds, made up of flowery political speeches in two languages, performances by celebrated musicians like Malhatini and the Mahotela Queens, a pantomime executed by five hundred schoolchidren, choreographed prancing by elaborately costumed horsemen, dazzling W reworks, even a ceremonial ribbon-cutting and release of multicolored balloons by the nation’s president. Havana Scratch a Cuban, uncover a paradox. To spend time in the crumbling but still heartbreakingly beautiful city of Havana, to talk to Cuban filmmakers during the Festival of New Latin American Cinema, is to hear the same words repeated over and over: contradictory, paradoxical, inexplicable, miraculous. “It’s more difficult to explain what happens in Cuba in rational terms than to live here,” says prominent director Gerardo Chijona. “If you’re going to go by common sense, forget it.” To examine this small island’s film history is to discover how far from conventional expectations everything is. Sarajevo SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA—Many things come to mind when this city’s name is mentioned, but a film festival is not one of them. This was the city that survived the longest siege of modern history, more than forty-six months of exhausting, terrifying shelling and sniping from the surrounding Serb-controlled hills that damaged or destroyed 60 percent of its buildings. Approximately ten thousand died, 150,000 fled, and those that remained did without much of what we like to consider essential. Fests with AESTHETIC AGENDAS Telluride More than twenty-two years ago, powered by the energy of youth, an innocent critic ventured out from the East Coast to a small festival in Colorado, then in just its third year. This is what he wrote: “Telluride is the name whispered to you as you sit shivering from celluloid overdose in a café in Cannes. Go to Telluride, the voices say, only a few years old and already the most respected small film festival in the world. Telluride is different, the voices say, and for once the voices are right.” Lone Pine Ask not what the world can do for you, says the self-sufficient Lone Pine Film Festival, show everyone what you’ve done for the world. While the standard festival looks outward, offering itself as a place where movies from everywhere can find a home, the folks here turn that formula on its head, inviting visitors to celebrate what this tiny Eastern Sierra town three hours from Los Angeles has contributed to the universe of film. Pordenone Silent films have magic. They’ve outwitted history. Once the most potent worldwide entertainment medium, silent films were subjected to a cultural firestorm of numbing proportions when sound came in. The prints themselves, according to Kevin Brownlow, the author of the landmark bookThe Parade’s Gone By and a reigning authority on silent W lm, endured “a record of destruction worthy of Attila the Hun: they have burned them, dumped them in the sea, hacked the reels with axes, or let them rot in vaults.” --- As a cinephile, filmmaker and political progressive, this cut-and-clear categorization worries me. We've learned the pros and cons of industrializing the realm of film festivals, so incorporating all aforementioned agendas to a fest's list of priorities does not itself prove detrimental-- but can dangers arise when capitalist agendas are prioritized over agendas pertaining more to representation? More to generating conversation on largely stigmatized issues? Start class convo on the matter, this could be an interesting topic. Turan, Kenneth. Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made, 125-39. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2002.